Brides and Grooms....Husbands, Wives and an Aardvark

I love the English language. I asssume this love affair is what propelled me into my career as an English teacher. Makes sense to me.

Two words within the language that hold particular significance to men are groom and husband. We spend one day as a groom and the rest of our married lives as husbands. On the day that we are grooms, we are joined by our brides who will spend the rest of their married lives as wives.

Both groom and husband are words that serve as verbs as well as nouns. Since we begin as grooms, let's examine the verbal function of the word groom. According to Merriam Webster, groom has four essential verbal functions:

1) to attend the cleaning of (as an animal) to maintain the health and condition of the coat of by brushing, combing, currying or similar attention.

2) to bring about or increase the acceptabilty of one's physical appearance by carefully attending to details of cleanliness and neatness.

3) to remove crudity or other objectionable features from....make smooth or elegant

4) to get into readiness for some specific objective.

Let's move on to husband and see what that means as a verb according to Merriam. Husband has four essential verbal functions namely:

1) to plow and grow crops on CULTIVATE

2) to take care of: utilize to advantage MANAGE

3) to use sparingly or hold back for future use CONSERVE or SAVE

4) to marry or find a husband for.

As grooms first and then as husbands our roles are defined by action as we attend to the cleaning of, bring about the acceptabilty of, remove crudity from and get in readiness as we plow, use to advantage, hold back our wives and brides while cultivating, managing and saving them.

Now let's look up the verbal implications of bride and wife.

Bride has one essential verbal function according to Webster which is 1) to act or appear as a bride.

Note to Merriam "it is not a good practice to include the word you are defining in the definition of the word that you are defining." Avoid construction like "an aardvark is an animal that does what an aardvark does  etc" no matter how mysrtified you are by the word that you attempt to define.

And now let's look up verbal functions for the word wife

Um

According to Webster's Third International Dictionary, wife has no identifiable verbal function. Zero. In tennis, love is the word for zero

May I suggest an initial verbal function for wife as a way to get beyond love.

a) to provide antagonistic co-operation to the husband during the time of marriage.

I'm pretty sure that most wives would argue that their verbal function more closely resembles the verbal function of the groom with the male as the aardvark in perpetual, continually undefinable consideration.

What's that honey?

Get off the computer?

Okay, okay, I'll be right there.

etc